The overall share of people expressing trust in basic institutions rose in the survey from the 2012 edition, to 57 percent from 51 percent, as trust bounced back from the hit it took from the European debt crisis and disputes between President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress over the U.S. debt limit, which caused the U.S. to losing its top credit rating. Yet while institutions were recovering some lost trust, the view of the leaders of those institutions remained sour.

Aso became something of a figure of fun during his brief stint as prime minister in 2009, during which he told a group of university students that young people should not get married because they are too poor and, because they don't earn much money, they are not worthy of respect from a life partner.

That insight was followed by a declaration that followers of the world's religions should learn from Japan's work ethic.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro has assured that President Chavez is on the mend, and has entered a new phase of treatment following the complex post-operation period, yet many are taking the possibility of talks between the US and Venezuela as a sign that Chavez’s days as President may be over.

The biggest mistake the industry makes is to ignore regional and geopolitical dynamics. It’s complicated, and the corporate world doesn’t have the patience for it. But what has happened in the Sahel since the Western intervention in Libya is the stuff of geopolitical analysis, and while it would have been difficult to predict the attack on Amenas because it was less about events in Mali than it was about an internecine struggle for the leadership throne of Sahelian jihad, it was easy to predict an urgent security situation from Libya across the Sahel and all the way to Syria.

The quinoa trade is yet another troubling example of a damaging north-south exchange, with well-intentioned health and ethics-led consumers here unwittingly driving poverty there. It's beginning to look like a cautionary tale of how a focus on exporting premium foods can damage the producer country's food security. Feeding our apparently insatiable 365-day-a-year hunger for this luxury vegetable, Peru has also cornered the world market in asparagus. Result? In the arid Ica region where Peruvian asparagus production is concentrated, this thirsty export vegetable has depleted the water resources on which local people depend. NGOs report that asparagus labourers toil in sub-standard conditions and cannot afford to feed their children while fat cat exporters and foreign supermarkets cream off the profits. That's the pedigree of all those bunches of pricy spears on supermarket shelves.

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Article suggestions for the Daily Digest can be sent to [email protected]. All suggestions are filtered by the Daily Digest team and preference is given to those that are in alignment with the message of the Crash Course and the "3 Es."

In a surprising article, Bloomberg’s Toru Fujioka reports on the response of Japanese consumers and businesses to deflation, finding a startling face (sic): many of them like it. The elderly benefit from savings and pensions that go further. And while deflation may harm the young by keeping wages stagnant in the long term, it’s also the only de facto wage increase they’ll see with businesses unwilling to raise salaries. Economist Tyler Cowen notes that though the Japanese economy has been stagnant, the unemployment rate is still 4.1 percent, a number that other countries must find enviable.

"Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe declared a "monetary regime change" on Tuesday as the central bank bowed to government pressure, setting a 2pc inflation target aimed at helping the country emerge from its prolonged bout of deflation.
"This opens a passageway toward bold monetary easing," Mr Abe told reporters after the Bank of Japan (BoJ) and government jointly announced the inflation target and plans for "open-ended" central bank asset purchases similar to the strategy followed by the US Federal Reserve. "

This perspective is no different than the appeals I see soliciting support for starving children in (name a country). Yet, if you research the country, you find that the population exceeds the capacity of the country in question, or that impovrished families are having between 4 and 6 children per fertile female.

If you haven't read Thomas Malthus' "An Essay on the Principle of Population" you should consider reading it. Thomas suggests that feeding hungry people doesn't reduce the number of hungry people in a given area, it just increases the number of people. The marginal people are still going to be hungry. The population will just go up because of the increase in available food.

This dynamic can be seen today in several places on the planet, Haiti and Africa to give examples. The last time I did the math, Haiti's population was at 335 people per square mile. Easter Island's population collapsed when it reached around 180 people per square mile. There were no NGOs around to sustain Easter Islands population.

Peru exporting water, in the form of asparagus, is no different than the US exporting fertility with all the grain we sell and give away. It's the same phenomenon. We don't worry about the implications for our future, but we are supposed to feel bad about the choices Peru is making today?

Don't try to lay a guilt trip on me for the consequences of bad decisions elsewhere, and don't try insist that I find out where the food I buy at the grocery store was produced and whether or not it was produced in a manner acceptable to the NGOs of the world.